The great and positive influence of Odhams Press

The article about Books, Reading and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle mentions The Marvels and Mysteries of Science, one of the first books that I ever owned. 

I saw this book as an endlessly-fascinating treasure trove; I felt the same way about several other books that I owned as a child. I didn't realise at the time that a few of my best books, including Marvels and Mysteries, were published by the same company. I wasn't interested in any background information: all I cared about then was a book's content. 

I learned a while back that some of my favourite books came from Odhams Press, which published a whole series of reasonably-priced, high-quality gift books for children. There were many more Odhams books than I ever saw at the time; I wish that I had been given more of them, considering how immensely just a few of their children's books enhanced my early life. Reading an Odhams book for the first time as an adult is just not the same!

A typical Odhams children's book, one that I wish I had owned:

My original copies were lost along the way, but some years ago I found replacements for Marvels and Mysteries and other books such as The Golden Gift Book and Wonders of the World online. The books were just as I remembered them. I was overwhelmed with nostalgia when I opened them and saw the familiar text and pictures.  

Something about The Golden Gift Book 
The Golden Gift Book (1939) is a typical Odhams gift book and in my opinion is the jewel in Odhams' crown. 

The Golden Gift Book is over 500 pages long. It is an anthology that has something for everyone. It contains a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, both with illustrations. Most of the illustrations are black and white but a few are in colour, including some beautiful endpapers.

The fiction consists of both short stories and poems, some by well-known authors, complemented with many attractive pictures by different artists; the non-fiction includes many How it Works and Introduction to Wildlife articles and a few general knowledge questions with answers.